scholarly journals Evidence for sex microchromosomes in a species with temperature-influenced sex determination (Crotaphytus collaris)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jodie M. Wiggins ◽  
Enrique Santoyo-Brito ◽  
Jon B. Scales ◽  
Stanley F. Fox

AbstractThe characteristics of a species’ evolution can be powerfully influenced by its mode of sex determination and, indeed, sex determination mechanisms vary widely among eukaryotes. In non-avian reptiles, sex was long thought to be determined bimodally, either by temperature or genetics. Here we add to the growing evidence that sex determining mechanisms in reptiles fall along a continuum rather than existing as a mutually exclusive dichotomy. Using qPCR, we demonstrate that the lizard Crotaphytus collaris possesses sex-based gene dosage consistent with the presence of sex michrochromosomes, despite that extreme incubation temperatures can influence hatchling sex ratio. Our results suggest a temperature override that switches genotypic females to phenotypic males at high and low temperatures.


1991 ◽  
Vol 69 (10) ◽  
pp. 2693-2696 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thane Wibbels ◽  
Flavius C. Killebrew ◽  
David Crews

Sex determination was investigated in Cagle's map turtle, Graptemys caglei, which has a restricted distribution which is the southernmost of all Graptemys species. This species exhibits temperature-dependent sex determination, with high incubation temperatures producing only females and low temperatures producing only males. The estimated pivotal temperature (approximately 30.0 °C) is higher than those reported for other species of Graptemys in North America; however, the interspecific variations in pivotal temperature are small (approximately 0.5–1.0 °C). Temperature appears to affect the ovarian or testicular nature of the gonads in an "all or none" fashion, but exerts a graded effect on the length of ovaries. In addition, temperature appears to exert a graded effect on the regression of the oviducts in males. The occurrence of temperature-dependent sex determination in this species is also of conservational importance, since alterations to a single river system could potentially impact the reproductive success of this species by changing nest temperatures and, thus, population sex ratio(s).



1992 ◽  
Vol 70 (2) ◽  
pp. 391-394 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cory R. Etchberger ◽  
Michael A. Ewert ◽  
Beth A. Raper ◽  
Craig E. Nelson

The sex of painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) is determined by the incubation temperature of the egg. At high temperatures (> 30 °C), all females are produced, with a transition to all males at most lower temperatures (24–27 °C). However, two of three previous studies have reported that some females also result when incubation temperatures are low (20–22 °C). In this study C. picta eggs were incubated at low temperatures (21.5 and 22.5 °C); however, macroscopic and histological examination of both embryos and hatchlings did not confirm these reports. Thus, C. picta has, at least typically, the pattern of sex determination that is most common among the genera to which it is most closely allied.



2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 1081-1088 ◽  
Author(s):  
A W Carter ◽  
R T Paitz ◽  
R M Bowden

Abstract Most organisms experience thermal variability in their environment; however, our understanding of how organisms cope with this variation is under-developed. For example, in organisms with temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD), an inability to predict sex ratios under fluctuating incubation temperatures in the field hinders predictions of how species with TSD will fare in a changing climate. To better understand how sex determination is affected by thermal variation, we incubated Trachemys scripta eggs using a “heat wave” design, where embryos experienced a male-producing temperature of 25 ± 3°C for the majority of development and varying durations at a female-producing temperature of 29.5 ± 3°C during the window of development when sex is determined. We compared the sex ratios from these incubation conditions with a previous data set that utilized a similar heat wave design, but instead incubated eggs at a male-producing temperature of 27 ± 3°C but utilized the same female-producing temperature of 29.5 ± 3°C. We compared the sex ratio reaction norms produced from these two incubation conditions and found that, despite differences in average temperatures, both conditions produced 50:50 sex ratios after ∼8 days of exposure to female-producing conditions. This emphasizes that sex can be determined in just a few days at female-producing conditions and that sex determination is relatively unaffected by temperatures outside of this short window. Further, these data demonstrate the reduced accuracy of the constant temperature equivalent model (the leading method of predicting sex ratios) under thermally variable temperatures. Conceptualizing sex determination as the number of days spent incubating at female-producing conditions rather than an aggregate statistic is supported by the mechanistic underpinnings of TSD, helps to improve sex ratio estimation methods, and has important consequences for predicting how species with TSD will fare in a changing climate.



1966 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. MCCRARY ◽  
T. BRADLEY ◽  
J. PARKS


Author(s):  
Jochen Rau

Even though the general framework of statistical mechanics is ultimately targeted at the description of macroscopic systems, it is illustrative to apply it first to some simple systems: a harmonic oscillator, a rotor, and a spin in a magnetic field. These applications serve to illustrate how a key function associated with the Gibbs state, the so-called partition function, is calculated in practice, how the entropy function is obtained via a Legendre transformation, and how such systems behave in the limits of high and low temperatures. After discussing these simple systems, this chapter considers a first example where multiple constituents are assembled into a macroscopic system: a basic model of a paramagnetic salt. It also investigates the size of energy fluctuations and how—in the case of the paramagnet—these fluctuations scale with the number of constituents.



2021 ◽  
Vol 112 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-164
Author(s):  
Suzanne Edmands

Abstract Rising global temperatures threaten to disrupt population sex ratios, which can in turn cause mate shortages, reduce population growth and adaptive potential, and increase extinction risk, particularly when ratios are male biased. Sex ratio distortion can then have cascading effects across other species and even ecosystems. Our understanding of the problem is limited by how often studies measure temperature effects in both sexes. To address this, the current review surveyed 194 published studies of heat tolerance, finding that the majority did not even mention the sex of the individuals used, with <10% reporting results for males and females separately. Although the data are incomplete, this review assessed phylogenetic patterns of thermally induced sex ratio bias for 3 different mechanisms: sex-biased heat tolerance, temperature-dependent sex determination (TSD), and temperature-induced sex reversal. For sex-biased heat tolerance, documented examples span a large taxonomic range including arthropods, chordates, protists, and plants. Here, superior heat tolerance is more common in females than males, but the direction of tolerance appears to be phylogenetically fluid, perhaps due to the large number of contributing factors. For TSD, well-documented examples are limited to reptiles, where high temperature usually favors females, and fishes, where high temperature consistently favors males. For temperature-induced sex reversal, unambiguous cases are again limited to vertebrates, and high temperature usually favors males in fishes and amphibians, with mixed effects in reptiles. There is urgent need for further work on the full taxonomic extent of temperature-induced sex ratio distortion, including joint effects of the multiple contributing mechanisms.



2019 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 2023-2044 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jin Cheng ◽  
Shuai Han ◽  
Qing Ye ◽  
Shuiyuan Cheng ◽  
Tianfang Kang ◽  
...  


2018 ◽  
Vol 171 ◽  
pp. 13001
Author(s):  
Alexander Botvina ◽  
Marcus Bleicher

The study of hypernuclei in relativistic ion collisions open new opportunities for nuclear and particle physics. The main processes leading to the production of hypernuclei in these reactions are the disintegration of large excited hyper-residues (target- and projectile-like), and the coalescence of hyperons with other baryons into light clusters. We use the transport, coalescence and statistical models to describe the whole reaction, and demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach: These reactions lead to the abundant production of multi-strange nuclei and new hypernuclear states. A broad distribution of predicted hypernuclei in masses and isospin allows for investigating properties of exotic hypernuclei, as well as the hypermatter both at high and low temperatures. There is a saturation of the hypernuclei production at high energies, therefore, the optimal way to pursue this experimental research is to use the accelerator facilities of intermediate energies, like FAIR (Darmstadt) and NICA (Dubna).



2010 ◽  
Vol 73 (8) ◽  
pp. 1502-1505 ◽  
Author(s):  
WENJING PAN ◽  
DONALD W. SCHAFFNER

Tomato-associated Salmonella outbreaks have recently become a significant food safety concern. Temperature abuse of cut tomatoes may have played a role in some of these outbreaks. The purpose of this study was to develop a mathematical model to describe the growth of Salmonella on cut tomatoes at various temperatures. Four Salmonella serotypes (Typhimurium, Newport, Javiana, and Braenderup) obtained from previous tomato-linked cases of salmonellosis were used in this study. These four serotypes were cultured separately, combined into a cocktail, and inoculated onto whole red round tomatoes and allowed to dry overnight. The tomatoes were then cut into pieces and incubated at a predetermined range of temperatures (10, 12.5, 15, 17.5, 20, 22.5, 25, 27.5, 30, and 35°C). Salmonella concentration was measured at specified time intervals to determine the growth curve for Salmonella on cut tomatoes at each temperature. The growth rates were calculated using DMFit and used to build a mathematical model to illustrate the relationship between the growth rates of Salmonella on tomatoes and incubation temperatures from 10 to 35°C. The resulting model compared favorably with a Salmonella growth model for raw poultry developed by our laboratory. The Pathogen Modeling Program underpredicted growth at low temperatures and overpredicted growth at high temperatures. ComBase predicted consistently slower growth rates than were observed in tomatoes but showed parallel increases in growth rate with increasing temperature.



2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 95-103 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Merchant-Larios ◽  
V. Díaz-Hernández


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document